A few days ago, I wrote about the event by Microsoft China Research and Development Group. Having attended this even today, I found that it wasn’t what I have expected it to be. I was hoping for a presentation about the role of Microsoft Research, and what MSR China does. But in fact, MSR China is a subsidiary of a much larger group called Microsoft China Research and Development, and this presentation today was more like a careers talk without any specifics. But nonetheless, it’s good to see at least 4 students from Sydney Uni turn up today. Most other people were from Macquarie Graduate School of Management though.
Anyhow, there are good points that are worth taking from today’s presentation.
Read more »
I’ve uploaded the photos taken at Student Daze onto my Flickr now, feel free to browse!
If you’re using Google Reader or another feed reader to read my blog, come and visit it in your browser because I’ve just put up a new header image. This photo of a sunrise was taken on the plane from San Francisco back to Sydney, looking out a window at the back of the 747-400. This was one of the few photos I’ve taken that is actually presentable. Most of them was a failure.
But anyway, what do you think of it?
Read more »
Once again, I’m writing this up on a plane on my way back home. The last two days (25-26 Sep 08) has been absolutely phenomenal at Student Daze 2008 – Microsoft Student Partners Summit 2008 v1.0. Why is it called Student “Daze†rather than Student “Days� I’m not really sure, but I think it has something to do with so many people having jet lag.
Student Daze brings a selection of MSPs around the world into Microsoft’s Headquarters at Redmond, Washington in the USA. We are given the opportunity to connect and chat to other MSPs, find out what it’s like and what’s happening in the academic scene around the world.
We also get to meet some of the greatest people from Microsoft, like Joe Wilson (again!) and Scott Guthrie, plus a sneak preview into amazing new software that’s yet to be released. Sorry, but you folks out there will need to wait until the upcoming PDC to see it. Any leaks? Well, read on for more about Popfly, Mesh, XNA, Silverlight, cloud computing and more.
Let’s get into what actually happened after the break!
Read more »
Photosynth was released last week to the public after years of development at Microsoft Live Labs, and at Seadragon. There’s been so much talk about it lately too.
So I went to the site, and played around with some synths others have made. One of the most amazing one was of the Grand Canal. Sure it’s cool, but it’s not going to work very well if it takes a few PhD’s to make. So I decided to give it a try.
Today was Sydney Uni Live, and I happen to be helping out at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering stand answering questions for high school students. This was the perfect place to get started. Heeding to the advice of the Photosynth guide, I took a lot of photos around the place, making sure that I have enough overlap between each of my photos.
I took 163 photos in total (filled up my 1GB memory card) with my trusty Ricoh Caplio GX digital camera. Surprisingly, all that I needed to do to create my synth was select the photos that I took, and gave it a name. The software then took care of everything else for me.
Be warned that the process of stitching the photos together takes quite a while, so sit tight while the computer thinks for you. Despite the poor lighting conditions indoors, and the nasty colour noise from shooting at ISO400 on this entry level camera, Photosynth did it magic and synthed it amazingly well (100% synthy)!
Make sure that you take a look at the results!
(I’d really like to embed the photosynth here, but it’s not letting me put the iframe… is it because of wordpress?)
Hint: To really see the magic that happens with Photosynth, press “p” after playing around with the synth a bit. This will hide the photos, leaving you with just the 3D dot representation of the virtual world. All this just from a bunch of photos? Totally amazing.
More possibilities after the break!
Read more »
A few days ago, I wrote about the event by Microsoft China Research and Development Group. Having attended this even today, I found that it wasn’t what I have expected it to be. I was hoping for a presentation about the role of Microsoft Research, and what MSR China does. But in fact, MSR China is a subsidiary of a much larger group called Microsoft China Research and Development, and this presentation today was more like a careers talk without any specifics. But nonetheless, it’s good to see at least 4 students from Sydney Uni turn up today. Most other people were from Macquarie Graduate School of Management though.
Anyhow, there are good points that are worth taking from today’s presentation.
Events, Microsoft, Photos | Edmund Tse | 
4 Oct 2008 09:39 | 
Comments (0) 
Subscribe